5/6/2014

Twenty-five year old Emily Letts is an abortion counselor in New Jersey. She discovered she was pregnant and opted to have an abortion. Untold numbers of abortions happen every day in this country, but what makes Emily’s story particularly horrifying is that she decided to have her abortion filmed for a video competition through Abortion Care Network’s Stigma Busting video competition (which she won). The film is not graphic and presents the abortion procedure as far less stressful than having a cavity filled.

I’ll let Emily Letts explain her motives,

I found out I was pregnant in November. I had been working at the clinic for about a year. It was my first pregnancy, and, full disclosure, I hadn’t been using any kind of birth control, which is crazy, I know. I’m a sex educator, and I love talking about birth control. Before this experience, hormonal birth control scared me because of complications I’d heard about from friends — gaining weight, depression, etc. So I tracked my ovulation cycle, and I didn’t have any long-term partners. I thought I was OK. But, you know, things happen. I wound up pregnant.

…

Once I caught my breath, I knew immediately I was going to have an abortion.

…

At first I was just going to write a blog. Then my administrator introduced me to a woman on YouTube who goes by Angie AntiTheist. She filmed herself having a medical abortion — after taking the pill RU486 — to show everyone that she was fine, that it’s not scary, it doesn’t hurt, and that she was confident in her decision to do it.

Everyone at the clinic was really supportive of filming it. At first they wanted to sit down and talk about the real consequences of this. There are a lot of politics involved. We knew we could have hundreds of protesters at our door; we could have bomb threats. Working at an abortion clinic, every once in awhile it feels like you’re working in a war zone.

But I said, “Bring it,” and they were on board.

…

I knew the cameras were in the room during the procedure, but I forgot about them almost immediately. I was focused on staying positive and feeling the love from everyone in the room. I am so lucky that I knew everyone involved, and I was so supported. I remember breathing and humming through it like I was giving birth. I know that sounds weird, but to me, this was as birth-like as it could be. It will always be a special memory for me. I still have my sonogram, and if my apartment were to catch fire, it would be the first thing I’d grab.

This is what we are, this is what we have become: The gift of life reduced to nothing more than a crass opportunity to take an obscene selfie during a birth-like moment – a moment that is anything but “birth-like”.

Emily Letts: So young, so dumb, so clueless, and so unable to understand – yet – that more than one soul died that day in the abortion clinic.

What’s very revealing to me is I bet a lot of the people that Emily hangs out with are — politically and emotionally — far more moved by the way that Fido or Kitty (or Goldie the goldfish) is dealt with and cared for. And then, worse of all, they all see themselves as being such humane and compassionate souls.

BTW, Adolph Hitler and his minions were big on animal rights and the humane treatment of animals.

It was my first pregnancy, and, full disclosure, I hadn’t been using any kind of birth control, which is crazy, I know. I’m a sex educator, and I love talking about birth control. Before this experience, hormonal birth control scared me because of complications I’d heard about from friends — gaining weight, depression, etc.

A perfect encapsulation of the modern left: you don’t have to know anything beyond the pre-approved talking points, and Heaven knows you don’t actually have to practice what you preach, yet you can somehow convince yourself and other fellow travelers that you are “an educator.” She’ll make a perfect federal bureaucrat when she gets a bit older. That mix of stupidity and self-confidence will really take her places.

If she ever has a female child, she won’t have to worry about her daughter being free to have an abortion cuz the way things are goin’, her daughter will even be free to have mama Emily put to sleep one fine day.

The United Nations is stepping up its attack on the Catholic Church‘s historic opposition to abortion, suggesting at a meeting Monday in Geneva that it amounts to “psychological torture” of women and should be repealed, a move Vatican officials refuse to consider.

Got that? The UN wants to replace God when it comes to where the Catholic Church derives its theology.

Oh, please. This is not the nadir of civilization. I’ll grant that this woman is a crass little fool. There has never been any shortage of those. I get a little weary of “it’s never been worse” no matter who it’s from. Environmentalists claiming the air has never been more polluted (never? Not even in the Victorian era when cities were heated with coal?). Libertarians claiming that Statism has reached a new peak (or low. Really? Compared to past societies that treated the peasants like farm animals?)

How about the blinkered idiots who came up with the idea of taking children from Irish immigrant families, so they wouldn’t be brought up in “popery”. It happened in this country, more than a century ago. Or the Catholic organization(s) in Ireland (to be even handed) who imprisoned unwed mothers and took their children from them?

This little idiot isn’t SPECIAL enough to represent a new low. She hasn’t the imagination, the drive, or the talent.

I certainly understand your point. I hope you understand mine: In the broader sense re our current modern culture, this is indeed who we are, and what we have become. If it weren’t so, this sort of behavior would not be acceptable, starting with the procedure itself all the way to the point of filming it to win a film competition, and all the obscenities in between.

After a week of terrible news, Texas Democratic gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis and her campaign rewrote a Washington Post headline in an e-mail to supporters.

“Ann Richards’ daughter shrugs off [Democratic Governor's Association's] Wendy Davis snub,” the edited headline from the Davis campaign read, according to Time political reporter Zeke Miller.

The original headline? “Planned Parenthood head shrugs of DGA’s Wendy Davis snub.”

This was an email to her supporters. Democrats. And Wendy Davis has to hide from the fact that the only reason she is even prominent enough to run for governor is her pro-abortion stance. She filibustered against a reasonable limitation on abortions because her position was/is that it’s a woman’s right to kill her kid right up until the moment of birth. And this is turning off women. So much so she won’t even list abortion as an issue that she’s running on.

I realize that Texas isn’t your typical state, but when you have to hide the fact you are pro-abortion from your Democratic supporters, I wonder how acceptable Emily Letts’ pro-abortion extremism truly is in our current modern culture. Outside of places like the Cosmopolitan editorial offices or the DNC.

I realize I’m drawing a fairly fine distinction between what is acceptable, and what our betters insist that we find acceptable and the beatings will continue until we do, I have to wonder.

I would agree that “we” as a society do not all share such a view, and that many are appalled, including some that were, maybe even still are, “pro-choice, but I wouldn’t do it myself”.
But it is also telling that some people can delude themselves into thinking that it is not only a good idea to have an abortion, to use abortion as one’s primary method of “birth control”, but to even make a public statement about it.

It wasn’t that many years ago that opposition to SSM helped voter turnout in 2004 to re-elect W., but it seems that the political power and vocal public approval has only grown dramatically since then. Of course, the loudly vocal approval does not mean that there is not a large number, in many places a majority, of people who disagree with SSM, but who do not see adequate reason to cause themselves grief by saying so.

Comment by John Cunningham (b43a73) — 5/7/2014 @ 6:10 am
Thanks for the link, interesting.
Sometimes by the grace of God people fail to continue to suppress the truth, and have the opportunity to confront reality.
I’m thinking that maybe the young lady has an unusually intense craving for acceptance, and so went to this extreme courting the acceptance and encouragement of her peers. But trying to fill a pathologic need with more pathology doesn’t get one to a good place.

I’m just very glad that I don’t have any young children to whom I need to explain what the now societally ubiquitous word “abortion” means, or what Letts was actually doing and documenting in her video.

After Susan Smith drowned her boys and after a father in suburban Chicago shot his wife and children in the family vehicle after telling them they were going on a water park outing, there was considerable media attention. An important focus was on the impact to kids who saw this constant TV coverage, and how to reassure them when they wondered and were scared– asking “would mommy ever drown me?” Would daddy ever shoot me on a car trip?”
In today’s environment how can a related question for impressionable and curious children not be, “did mommy ever think of aborting me?” Did I ever have any brothers or sisters whom I never saw because they were not allowed to be born?”

22. …It wasn’t that many years ago that opposition to SSM helped voter turnout in 2004 to re-elect W., but it seems that the political power and vocal public approval has only grown dramatically since then. Of course, the loudly vocal approval does not mean that there is not a large number, in many places a majority, of people who disagree with SSM, but who do not see adequate reason to cause themselves grief by saying so.

Comment by MD in Philly (f9371b) — 5/7/2014 @ 5:08 am

MD, the only reason saying you disagree with SSM would cause you grief is because SSM advocates know that if it’s left up to the people SSM wouldn’t be legal.

If SSM was truly popular then the intimidation campaigns wouldn’t be necessary. The reason why the gaystapo had to go after Brendan Eich is because they know that popular sentiment truly isn’t with them on SSM. They can get pollsters to say majorities support SSM, but they can’t get majorities on election day. The polls they cite don’t reflect reality. Which is why so many states are still trying to amend their constitutions to limit marriage to a man and a woman.

You don’t need to shout down your opponents and threaten their jobs if SSM is truly popular. You need to silent dissent so the “vocal public approval” is the only voice heard and impose SSM by judicial fiat because it is not truly the popular will.

…I remember breathing and humming through it like I was giving birth. I know that sounds weird, but to me, this was as birth-like as it could be. It will always be a special memory for me. I still have my sonogram, and if my apartment were to catch fire, it would be the first thing I’d grab.

It sounds weird because it is weird. Killing your baby is, to her, as close to birth-like as possible? That sounds psychopathic. As does deciding that if she could only save one thing if her apartment was on fire it would be her sonogram to remind her of her “special memory.”

Many serial killers like Ted Bundy also keep trophies of their kills to remind them of their “special memories.” Eerily, Rodney Alcala’s trophies also took the form of pictures of his victims.

the one kinda nice thing about the abysmal fascist fiasco america has become is

the whole operatically jerry springeresque sturm and drang over other people’s abortions is very obviously becoming a problem of the sort that a debtwhore loser nation can’t entertain for more than a millisecond or two

it’s like global warming

yeah you can get all worked up about it

but your loser neo-fascist nationstate ain’t got the resources to move the dial on this one\

…and your fellow whore foodstamper citizens have way way WAY bigger problems

but, on the other hand, it probably beats whining about matrimonial homos

I think we underestimate how much courage it takes sometimes just to live daily life with integrity.
Of course, if one isn’t interested in living life with integrity then you don’t know what the fuss is all about.

Becoming more animated, she continued, “Like, no one can tell me how to feel about my abortion. I felt how I felt, and that was not influenced by anyone else except for how I grew up, how I you know went to college, how I live my day, how like I ate a salad for breakfast. How I, like – it’s me. Like, this is me,” she said, throwing her hands about and cocking her head from side to side.

She continued, “Like, I breathe. I sneeze. I fart. I poop. I’m a human being. You know, that’s all that I am. And so like, I’m sharing my story.”

You can stop now.

She then asked Scanlan, “Who are you to say you have to feel this way about a very intimate experience? Who are you say to say that like I am trivializing something?

Nobody ever told Emily that “trivializing” isn’t a feeling.

And really, what “very intimate experience” wouldn’t you post to YouTube? Which of course wouldn’t be trivializing it.

No, no. It’s my life. I get to do what I want to do with my life. And I’m having the gall, I guess the audacity to say, like, I want to share this with the rest of the world.”

…Letts paused noticeably after Smith said one viewer called her an “attention-seeker” and a female named Lauren said that she “doesn’t believe this is real. She says you are an actress.”

After stumbling and stuttering, Letts replied, “I don’t know what to say to that.”

Letts, who works as an abortion doula in New Jersey, then compared the comments to those who would question the story of a rape victim. “This is my genuine, honest story,” she said.

She was only “doing all these interviews” to help other women see “a positive abortion story,” and in no way to promote herself, she said.

OMG, that video was embarrassing to watch. I had to stop there.A couple of people commented that they didn’t believe her story was possibly real and she was just seeking attention. She thought it would be clever to pose a what if; what if she had said she was a rape victim? Would they say that she was just sharing her misery?

I wanted to slap her and say, “No, you idiot they’d say they still don’t believe your story could possibly be real and you are just seeking attention.”

She also thought she had a brilliant riposte to that “attention seeker” charge. She wanted to know how she could be an attention seeker when she didn’t even know about the contest before she decided to to film her abortion with the intention of putting it on the internet?!?!

“I reject the idea that just when a women [sic] wants to come forward and speak about her body and her positive or negative stories that have to do with her uterus and reproductive system that all of the sudden she’s becoming attention-seeking. That’s just another way of shaming women into being silent,” she stated.

Letts herself has been anything but silent, making appearances on international media outlets. The same day as her BBC interview, she told Philadelphia Magazine, “I feel super great about having an abortion.”

Hello! When you enter a video competition and you’re on YouTube and the BBC and telling magazines and everyone else you can flag down about your “uterus and reproductive system” (help me out doc, I always thought the uterus was part of the reproductive system) you are seeking attention.

All I can say is, if the Abortion Care Network has a Stigma Confirming video competition I want to enter this video. She is apparently creeping out people on both sides of the abortion argument. If even a smidgeon of this story is true it’s frightening on so many levels. She’s just so shallow, selfish, callous, and ultimately grotesque.

I’m leaning toward agreeing with the callers who said that this story wasn’t real. She faked her online abortion.

Because I can’t believe anyone would have shagged this girl in the first place.